"As for your commitments, you just last week completed and mailed a book. In such a case you normally indulge in unrelated other activities for a month or two before undertaking another major project."
"Are you telling me that what you have in mind is a minor project?"
"My apologies. Before undertaking another major writing project. You would do little writing in this case, although it in fact provides the logic for your presence. However, I am getting ahead of myself. Are you aware that Russia has offered to sell light-water nuclear reactor technology to Iran, and that the United States is much troubled by that idea?"
"I heard Warren Christopher say as much, in a television interview."
"Then you might think that the news that Iran has changed its mind, and now professes no interest whatsoever in such purchases, would please us. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We believe that Iran has lost interest only because it has the key to something more disturbing. Are you familiar with the idea of cold fusion?"
"Enough to know it's total nonsense. Sheldon Glashow said it best."
I saw a slight uncertainty on his face, like the first smudge on polished furniture. Could his briefing have been less than perfect? "Glashow? Ah, of our organization?"
"Sheldon Glashow is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. When Pons and Fleischmann first announced the discovery of cold fusion at a press conference in Utah, Glashow realized at once that it was bogus. I heard him give a talk very soon afterwards which ended with, 'Never trust a four-letter state.'"
"I see." Pierce had regrouped even before I finished the first sentence. "Let me drop the term 'cold fusion,' in favor of simple fusion. Something is going on in Iran. All we have at the moment are bits and pieces, but we believe that they have discovered the secret to commercial fusion power. In fact, they have a working fusion reactor."
"Why bits and pieces? You must have dozens of contacts inside the country."
"Perhaps." He weakened. "Of course we do. They are hearing a great deal. But I doubt that any one of them understands it. In fact, reading their reports I am sure that they do not. We need someone who knows the country well, someone who also knows enough science to discard what is patently false. Someone like you, Mr. Dutton."
)
